So this blogger claims in an intriguing post. What the heck? Everybody doing business in China has to compromise on their ethics to some extent. Why not Rolling Stone?

I finally read the Rolling Stone China cover story on Cui Jian on the plane from Kunming to Beijing yesterday, and the way they totally elided the man’s political importance was pure sophistry genius. The article totally focused on his song Yi Wu Suo You translated sometimes as Having Nothing, Less than Nothing, etc. – which has a great, great deal of its fame wrapped up in its becoming an anthem for student protestors in Tienanmen Square in the weeks leading up to the June 4 massacre. So Rolling Stone writes the whole story about the song’s first performance in 1986 with this aura of divine provenance about how the song was destined for fame because it was just so awesome from the get go, eg. it was only rehearsed once before its TV performance debut and all kinds of stuff like this. Then from 1986 they jump straight to 2006, leaving out all the important history, with one major excuse being that Cui Jian himself isn’t willing to talk about it. What a hoot!

Emphasis added. Interesting blog, well written and well worth a look.

This photo’s from a classic post from my esteemed blog-buddy Bingfeng; a must-read

Finally, China’s going to impose a tax on chopsticks and other wood products in an effort to let a few trees in China survive. (Can you imagine, billions and billions of used chopsticks being trashed each and every day, what a huge pile that must be?)

China will slap a tax on chopsticks and a range of goods ranging from yachts to petrol in a bid to save trees and protect the environment.

Plans to impose a 5 percent consumption tax on both disposable wooden chopsticks and wooden floor panels would help curb the plundering of timber resources and efforts to protect the environment, the Ministry of Finance said.

Disposable chopsticks used up 1.3 million cubic meters of timber each year, depleting the country’s forests, the ministry said.

How about banning disposable wood chopsticks altogether? Bingfeng, in the post cited above, says he and his wife now have a policy of taking their own chopsticks with them. (And while we’re at it, how about disposable plastic bottles and all things styrofoam.)

This really does seem over the top. But then, hurling over-the-top accusations at one another (Blues and Greens) seems to be the norm here in Taiwan. That said, could this possibly be true??

The nation’s top military leader yesterday threw his weight behind claims of a coup plot by pan-blue supporters after the bitterly disputed presidential election in 2004.

During a legislative hearing, Minister of National Defense Lee Jye (�傑) yesterday said that some military personnel had approached him and asked him to feign sickness and step aside so that they could organize a coup against President Chen Shui-bian (陳水�).

On Monday, a second hearing began at the Taiwan High Court in a suit filed by former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) against Chen Shui-bian. They claim that he defamed them by asserting that there had been an attempted coup d’etat following their defeat in the election.

At Monday’s hearing, Chen’s lawyer showed the judge classified documents that he claimed proved the coup attempt. He claimed that the classified documents clearly record persons, happenings, times, locations and evidence of the coup attempt.

I also remember reading countless pan-Blue articles with “definitive proof” the 2004 Chen assassination attempt was choreographed. Everything’s a conspiracy. When it comes to politics in Taiwan, who knows what to believe? I think the safest strategy is to believe nothing. What a shame; the people here are longing for a real government that really cares about them. Instead, we have a never-ending soap opera of charges and counter-charges, fostering a mood of profound cynicism when it comes to all things political in Taiwan.

My friend Lisa writes a moving post about her friend Hao Wu, who is apparently languishing in a state prison somewhere in China for no discernible reason. It’s too heartbreaking.

It’s hard for me to know what to say, except that Hao is a great person, with talent and heart and vision, and that for the Chinese government to detain him is yet another sign of how the CCP still squanders the talent of its own people, how it is destroying China’s future in the name of “social harmony,” which more than anything else seems to be a figleaf of ideological cover for the exercise of raw power and untrammeled authority. Hao never challenged the CCP. The only way in which his work could be considered “political” is that he does not censor his own observations, that he thinks freely and isn’t afraid to say what he thinks.

If these are the kinds of characteristics that the Chinese authorities find so threatening that they respond with detentions and repression, then I really do fear for China’s future.

Please go and read the whole thing.

Bring ’em on.

BAGHDAD, Iraq – About 100 masked gunmen stormed a prison near the Iranian border Tuesday, cutting phone wires, freeing all the inmates and leaving behind a scene of devastation and carnage — 20 dead policemen, burned-out cars and a smoldering jailhouse.

At least 10 attackers were killed in the dawn assault on the Muqdadiyah lockup on the eastern fringe of the Sunni Triangle, police said. The raid showed the mostly Sunni militants can still assemble a large force, capable of operating in the region virtually at will — even though U.S. and Iraqi military officials said last year that the area was no longer an insurgent stronghold.

The insurgency’s strength, spiraling sectarian violence and the stalemate over forming a government in
Iraq have led politicians and foreign policy experts to say Iraq is on the brink or perhaps in the midst of civil war.

In all, 33 prisoners were freed, including 18 insurgents who were detained Sunday during raids by security forces in the nearby villages of Sansal and Arab, police said. It was the capture of those insurgents that apparently prompted Tuesday’s attack.

I watched Bush’s embarrassing press conference last night, where he assured us, again, that we’re all safer now and we will win (and that we’re in Iraq because of September 11). But he seems to actually have fallen for his own tripe that Iraq is now a functional democracy. Realistically, Iraq is now in a state of what we might call functional anarchy. Lots of businesses are doing okay. There’s no hand-to-hand fighting in the streets, or at least not a whole lot. At the same time, the country is breaking down, with militias enforcing the laws (or breaking them), with no control or central authority. The government is impotent and Iraq is being pulled apart. And large numbers of citizens are being killed on a daily basis. I think it’s fair to call it a low-level civil war, with a high probability of escalating into a more full-blown conflict.

Word games. The oil lobby (i.e., the entire Bush administration) is a master of the art. But is their “realtity” really reality?

A New Grip on ‘Reality’
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: March 22, 2006

One of the most important laws of political debate is this: To name something is to own it. If you can name something, get that name to stick and therefore define how people think about an issue, your opponents don’t stand a chance. One of the most pernicious things that Vice President Dick Cheney and Big Oil have done for years is to define “realism” when it comes to U.S. energy policy — and therefore they have owned the debate.

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You can’t say we weren’t warned about 911. Bush loves to talk about the threats of terrorism and to boldly state, “Not on my watch!” And yet, all the horrifying things that have happened to America this century happened on his watch. Every one. Read below if you need further proof.

Fly Into a Building? Who Could Imagine?
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: March 22, 2006

Three little words:

Still employed there.

Of all the through-the-looking-glass moments in the last few days, the strangest is this: The F.B.I officer who arrested and questioned Zacarias Moussaoui told a jury that he had alerted his superiors about 70 times that Mr. Moussaoui was a radical Islamic fundamentalist who hated America and might be plotting to hijack an airplane.

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Could 911 have been prevented? You decide.

The FBI agent who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui in August 2001 testified Monday he spent almost four weeks trying to warn U.S. officials about the radical Islamic student pilot but “criminal negligence” by superiors in Washington thwarted a chance to stop the 9/11 attacks.

FBI agent Harry Samit of Minneapolis originally testified as a government witness, on March 9, but his daylong cross examination by defense attorney Edward MacMahon was the strongest moment so far for the court-appointed lawyers defending Moussaoui. The 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent is the only person charged in this country in connection with al-Qaida’s Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon.

MacMahon displayed a communication addressed to Samit and FBI headquarters agent Mike Maltbie from a bureau agent in Paris relaying word from French intelligence that Moussaoui was “very dangerous,” had been indoctrinated in radical Islamic Fundamentalism at London’s Finnsbury Park mosque, was “completely devoted” to a variety of radical fundamentalism that Osama bin Laden espoused, and had been to Afghanistan.

…Samit told MacMahon he couldn’t persuade FBI headquarters or the Justice Department to take his fears seriously. No one from Washington called Samit to say this intelligence altered the picture the agent had been painting since Aug. 18 in a running battle with Maltbie and Maltbie’s boss, David Frasca, chief of the radical fundamentalist unit at headquarters.

They fought over Samit’s desire for a warrant to search Moussaoui’s computer and belongings. Maltbie and Frasca said Samit had not established a link between Moussaoui and terrorists….

Under questioning from MacMahon, Samit acknowledged that he had told the Justice Department inspector general that “obstructionism, criminal negligence and careerism” on the part of FBI headquarters officials had prevented him from getting a warrant that would have revealed more about Moussaoui’s associates. He said that opposition blocked “a serious opportunity to stop the 9/11 attacks.”

Remember, at the time the Justice Department was far more concerned about the far more dangerous threat of pornography than that of terrorism. I find this sickening story only too believable. One day we’ll look back and wonder how and why, for years after 911, the American public viewed the Bush adminstration as strong and effective on terrorism, when in truth they were bunglers, liars and fools. It may be one of the greatest PR coups in the history of our planet. But it can’t last forever.

If this story is true – and it sure sounds like it is – we may have another Abu Ghraib brewing. US Marines are being accused of the wholesale slaughter of 15 innocent Iraqis, for virtually no reason at all. Kids, too. Parents and their children. Apparenly there are images captured on a graduate student’s video camera. If so, brace yourself for the next big Iraq scandal.

Hao Wu of Beijing or Bust

A number of China-related bloggers have been sitting on this story for several days, fearful that saying anything might make the dilemma of Hao Wu of Beijing or Bust worse than it already is. Now, Rebecca MacKinnon has pointed us to this site put up by Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices (for which Hao Wu also blogged). Please stop what you are doing and go there now.

I see this as a terrible outrage on many levels. I see it as a personal outrage, because although I’ve never met him (and indeed, we even had a friendly quarrel or two), one of my dearest friends is his personal friend. Needless to say (though it can never be said enough), it’s also an outrageous example of the police state methods of the CCP. No one can tell me China is not a police state. It meets every definition, and this can be held up as certifiable proof.

I always felt Hao Wu was a bit easy on the CCP. He used to jokingly link to this site on his blogroll as “China Bashing Central.” But I never bash China. I only bash the Chinese police state. It is sickening and infuriating and agonizing to think that this brilliant artist, one of the most original minds in the Chinese blogosphere, is now in the hands of these thugs. I admit, I don’t know all the details (no one does), but from Ethan’s site we know this:

Hao Wu (Chinese name: å?´çš“), a Chinese documentary filmmaker who lived in the U.S. between 1992 and 2004, was detained by the Beijing division of China’s State Security Bureau on the afternoon of Wednesday, Febuary 22, 2006. On that afternoon, Hao had met in Beijing with a congregation of a Christian church not recognized by the Chinese government, as part of the filming of his next documentary.

Hao had also been in phone contact with Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer specializing in human rights cases. Gao confirmed to one of Hao’s friends that the two had been in phone contact and planned to meet on Feb. 22, but that their meeting never took place after Gao advised against it. On Friday, Feb. 24, Hao’s editing equipment and several videotapes were removed from the apartment where he had been staying. Hao has been in touch his family since Feb. 22, but judging from the tone of the conversations, he wasn’t able to speak freely. One of Haoss friends has been interrogated twice since his detention. Beijing’s Public Security Bureau (the police) has confirmed that Hao has been detained, but have declined to specify the charges against him.

The reason for Hao’s detention is unknown. One of the possibilities is that the authorities who detained Hao want to use him and his video footage to prosecute members of China’s underground Churches. Hao is an extremely principled individual, who his friends and family believe will resist such a plan. Therefore, we are very concerned about his mental and physical well-being.

So I know enough to be furious. Detained without charges. Another casualty in the ongoing battle to preserve harmony. I believe and hope he’ll emerge from this alright, but I also believe the more pressure is brought to bear the greater the likelihood of his swift release. Stay tuned; I and other bloggers will be following this one carefully.

Is there anyone who would argue China is not a police state? (And do not respond that the US is a police state, too. That’s not the issue here, and besides I agree, Bush’s tactics do have police-state characteristics.) If not, what is your definition of a police state?

UPDATE: Ethan’s web site has already been blocked in China (surprise surprise). I am pasting the whole thing below.

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